Enhancing Stakeholder Coordination in Nigeria's Lithium Corridor: A Framework for Sustainable Strategic Mineral Development

Abstract

Nigeria's emerging lithium industry offers significant opportunities for industrialization, job creation, local value addition, and economic diversification. However, realizing these benefits requires effective coordination among government agencies, mining companies, investors, research institutions, infrastructure providers, and host communities. Despite the strategic importance of lithium, limited quantitative evidence exists on the factors influencing stakeholder coordination, while the application of explainable machine learning to strategic mineral governance remains underexplored. This study develops a data-driven framework for evaluating stakeholder coordination within Nigeria's lithium corridor using survey data collected from 300 stakeholders. Six latent constructs Governance Coordination, Infrastructure Readiness, Information Sharing, Investment Facilitation, Community Engagement, and Coordination Effectiveness were validated using Cronbach's Alpha, the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) measure, Bartlett's Test of Sphericity, and Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). Five machine learning algorithms Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, CatBoost, and Decision Tree were developed and evaluated using Accuracy, Precision, Recall, F1-Score, and ROC-AUC, while SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) enhanced model interpretability. The results demonstrated excellent reliability (Cronbach's Alpha = 0.838 – 0.937), satisfactory sampling adequacy (KMO = 0.844), and significant Bartlett's Test (χ² = 5427.825, p < 0.001), with five latent factors explaining 70.28% of the total variance. CatBoost achieved the best predictive performance, recording an accuracy of 73.33% and an ROC-AUC of 77.89%. SHAP analysis identified Governance Coordination, Information Sharing, Infrastructure Readiness, Investment Facilitation, and Community Engagement as the most influential predictors of Coordination Effectiveness. The findings demonstrate that strengthening stakeholder coordination can support investment, local beneficiation, battery manufacturing, and industrial development, thereby enabling sustainable job creation and economic diversification. The proposed framework provides policymakers and industry stakeholders with an interpretable decision-support tool for promoting sustainable development within Nigeria's lithium value chain.